ISLAMABAD: Confusion prevailed among around 200,000 candidates who appeared in the Medical and Dental Colleges Admission Test (MDCAT) after the Pakistan Medical Commission (PMC) announced on social media that the result cards that had been sent to them through e-mail should be ignored as they had a number of mistakes.
Later, it was announced that around 125,000 candidates — 65 per cent overall — had failed to get the passing marks [137/210].
The PMC also claimed that around 78pc candidates each from Sindh and Balochistan, 70pc candidates from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 65pc from Gilgit-Baltistan, 62pc from Azad Jammu and Kashmir, 57pc from Punjab and 54pc candidates from Islamabad failed to qualify the exam.
On the other hand, during a press conference on Saturday, the PMC management refused to reply to queries of mediapersons, terming them ‘planted questions’.
In response, the National Press Club demanded the government to take notice of the ‘dictatorial’ attitude of the PMC management.
Candidates of MDCAT – which is a mandatory test for getting admission to medical and dental colleges – on Saturday received result cards through e-mails sent by the PMC. However, a number of students were surprised to see that their marks had not been counted correctly.
According to some of the result cards, available with Dawn, students got 45 and even 51 marks out of a total of just 20 marks. Similarly, there was a difference of around 30 to 40 marks in the total. When the result cards were shared by the candidates on social media, the commission responded by saying that they should ignore the results.
“Please ignore any email received from a PMC address with an attached result certificate. The final MDCAT result will be announced online only,” the PMC tweeted.
Later during a press conference, held by PMC President Dr Arshad Taqi and Vice President Ali Raza, the results were announced.
It was informed that the post-exam analysis of MDCAT was carried out independently by Quaid-i-Azam University as per the request of Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) on Health Dr Faisal Sultan.
The media was informed that a record number of 194,133 students took MDCAT from Aug 30 to Oct 2 out of whom 68,680 passed, with the national pass percentage of 35.4. Besides, 276 students, who had Covid-19 or dengue fever, took the exam on Saturday.
According to the breakdown, 42,860 students passed MDCAT in Punjab, with the pass percentage of 42.84, 7,797 students qualified in Sindh with a 22.37pc ratio, 12,205 students remained successful in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with a 29.32pc passing ratio while in Balochistan 1,537 students cleared the exam, recording a pass percentage of 21.12.
Similarly, in Islamabad 2,139 students qualified MDCAT, with 46.26 pass percentage, 456 candidates passed in Gilgit-Baltistan with 35.21pc success ratio and 38.13pc (1,478) candidates remained successful in Azad Kashmir.
It may be mentioned here that MDCAT was held for the first time in 25 centres in Pakistan and six international centres in North America, Europe and the Middle East.